A former medical aide at the Allegheny County Jail allegedly used his position to abuse and harass three incarcerated women earlier this year, according to charges filed against the man Thursday.
Shiquille Desesso, 28, of Pittsburgh’s Knoxville neighborhood, faces three counts each of institutional sexual assault and indecent assault, accused of making women touch his groin while he drew blood from them.
According to the criminal complaint, an incarcerated woman first came forward in late May and told a corrections captain that a medical employee she knew as Shaq asked her inappropriate questions, like where she lived and whether she “had a man.” She also said that when he was drawing her blood, he maneuvered himself so he was pressing inappropriately against her arm, investigators wrote.
The woman said it happened on two separate occasions, according to the complaint, and she’d asked him to stop. She said she was concerned about reporting it, but she’d detailed the abuse to her sister during a phone call. Investigators were able to find the recording of that conversation and confirmed the woman had told her about the incident the same day it happened.
A second woman also came forward with similar allegations about Desesso. She, too, said that while he was drawing her blood, Desesso allegedly moved her arm in a way that made her touch him, according to the complaint. She said she believed the maneuver was intentional.
A third woman came forward the same day and she’d experienced similar abuse by Desesso a few weeks earlier, according to the complaint. She said Desesso told her “I want you to touch it” while he was drawing blood, and she moved her hand away.
In an interview with investigators in June, Desesso was asked whether he’d ever had inappropriate contact with any incarcerated women. According to the complaint, Desesso said he’d had some personal conversations with several women and he said “I did compromise myself with some of these inmates, but I am not a monster.”
Desesso said he did ask some women if they were single, according to the complaint. Any physical contact, he told investigators, was incidental and caused by the need to have a woman’s arm extended outward during blood draws.
According to the complaint, Desesso said women’s arms sometimes do “brush up against my leg and I will immediately move it, I’ll adjust myself to make sure they are not touching anything they are not supposed to be touching” but “it may have happened.”
Jail officials said upon receiving the complaints against Desesso, he was immediately suspended. He was fired June 4, the same day as his interview with investigators.
Police said Desesso turned himself in to police Thursday morning.
